


for a diamond in the dust

by saltsanford



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Injuries, Panic Attacks, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, don't look at me, me taking creative liberties with the interior of slave I, post episode 15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:16:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28061538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltsanford/pseuds/saltsanford
Summary: Din cuts the transmission off to ringing silence. He stares down at the console, fingers clenched, mind strangely blank. The razor-sharp focus that has compelled him forward over the last however-many hours feels thin and tremulous, as if one wrong move will send him sliding along its edge to be split in two. He balances on it, careful, cautious. Slipping now is not an option.Din and the immediate aftermath of the transmission, post episode 15.
Relationships: Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Din Djarin, Din Djarin & Cara Dune, Din Djarin & Grogu | Baby Yoda
Comments: 51
Kudos: 346





	for a diamond in the dust

“He means more to me than you will ever know.”

_Than you will ever, ever know._

Din cuts the transmission off to ringing silence. He stares down at the console, fingers clenched, mind strangely blank. The razor-sharp focus that has compelled him forward over the last however-many hours feels thin and tremulous, as if one wrong move will send him sliding along its edge to be split in two. He balances on it, careful, cautious. Slipping now is not an option.

_He means more to me than you will ever know._

The ringing in his ears grows louder, so loud that Din glances up, thinking that something is wrong, that the ringing is an alarm or maybe even a return transmission. He sees no signs of anything amiss, only Cara standing in front of him. Her lips are moving, brow furrowed, but he can’t hear her over that infernal _ringing_ noise—

Oh.

Din gives his head a little shake, draws his focus tighter around him. “What?”

“I said we should get some rest,” says Cara. “We’ve got about five hours to go.”

“No,” says Din. He cannot fathom resting. “We should go over the plan again—”

“We’ve been over the plan twenty times, Mando,” says Fett from the doorway, helmet tucked under his arm. He arches an eyebrow when Din glares at him. “This isn’t anyone’s first time assaulting an imperial cruiser.”

There’s a moment when everyone eyes each other, trying to determine if this statement is true or not. Cara and Fennec exchange a little shrug— _imperial cruisers, am I right, what are ya gonna do_ —and Fennec turns to Din. “He’s right. We’ve got this under control.”

Din has no choice but to nod. “Fine. But an hour before we get there, we’re reconvening and—”

He cuts himself off with a small hiss, his left forearm spasming in pain as he rests his weight on the console. He flexes his fist, perplexed, before he remembers: the fight with the pirates, the instinctual block with his left arm, realizing a split second too late that there was no beskar to protect the bone.

“You okay?” Cara asks with a frown.

“Just a bad bruise,” says Din, flexing his arm again and fighting back a wince. He’s tempted to ignore it, but it won’t do to go into the upcoming fight with a busted arm. “I think. Fett, you have a med kit?”

“Lower bay. Top shelf.”

Their stares bore into the back of his helmet as Din climbs down to the lower bay to find the med kit right where Fett said it would be. Din removes it from the shelf and digs through its contents until he finds a bacta wrap. A few hours and his arm will be as good as new—or at least, good enough to get him through the inevitable fight on Moff Gideon’s cruiser.

Din clenches his jaw as he removes his glove and beskar arm guard, rolling back his sleeve. The bruising is worse than he thought, a six-inch patch of mottled red skin already turning to an ugly violet. He prods gingerly up and down his forearm, suddenly not convinced that it _isn_ _’t_ broken, but everything feels normal. It’s a miracle he didn’t snap the bone, doing a block like that. Stupid, but he’s never fought without his beskar before, the armor as much a weapon to him as his blaster or pulse rifle.

A memory blossoms, unbidden: Grogu with his little hand stretched out to heal a nasty, poisoned gash on the inside of Din’s elbow several months back. Din had gotten in a particularly brutal fight with some bounty hunters sometime after Nevarro, and there’d been no shortage of injuries to doctor after the fact.

He’d been so focused on trying to wrap his thigh that he didn’t realize Grogu had healed his elbow until the kid had collapsed to a sit in front of him. “No!” he’d said, but it was too late: Din’s skin was pink and freshly healed, the fogginess brought on by the poison fading, and Grogu was well on his way to a nap.

“Don’t do that,” he’d said, lifting the kid into his lap. “You hear? Not for me. Never for me. You need to save your strength.”

Grogu had just blinked up at him sleepily. It hadn’t stopped him from trying to heal Din after every fight, but Din had gotten better at stopping him. He knows that if Grogu were here now, he’d be standing there with his arm stretched out, delicate brow wrinkled in concentration, fixing Din with an affronted look when he was stopped.

But Grogu isn’t here.

_He means more to me than you will ever know._

Din swallows hard, clenching his left fist atop his knee. He barely registers the spasms of pain it sends up his arm this time. The ringing is back in his ears, growing louder and louder until it’s a rushing roar, blocking out the conversation upstairs, the whir of the ship hurtling through hyperspace. He sits down hard on the bench, bacta wrap hanging uselessly in his fingers.

All of the memories he’s been keeping so carefully damned threaten to spill over. His home turned to dust before his eyes in mere seconds. The bright grid of the scanner, storing his features somewhere in an imperial database. The feeling of unwanted eyes on his bare face. That flimsy, unfamiliar armor leaving him feeling unprotected and naked.

Grogu’s frightened eyes wide and high above him, too high, as he was carried away to the imperial cruiser to be hurt, tortured, _killed_ —

Din’s vision grows fuzzy around the edges, bright spots dancing in front of him and turning the ship into a dizzy kaleidoscope of colors. That razor-sharp focus is slipping out from underneath him and he reaches for it, tries to balances on its edge, but everything in him is loose and floating. His breath catches in his throat, chest constricting as if his armor is growing tighter around his body. He knows he’s going under, but he doesn’t have time for this, he doesn’t—he can’t—

There’s a heavy pressure on the back of his neck, forcing his head down between his knees. For a moment he tenses, jerks against it, until he hears Cara’s voice say, “breathe. Exhale first, on my count.”

Din wants to tell her that he can’t, that there’s no air in his lungs, but he forces himself to exhale on her _one, two, three._ It’s too loud and shaky, and he realizes that his whole body is trembling.

“Good,” says Cara. She sounds so faraway, but her palm is heavy and solid on the back of his neck, warm even through his clothing and her gloves. He focuses on that, presses into her grip. “Good. Now in. One…two…three.”

He may as well be breathing through a straw, but he sucks the air in on her count anyway. Everything feels sluggish and slow, and when she tells him to exhale again, he shakes his head. “Can’t,” he gasps.

She gives him a little shake. “You can. Come on, try again. Listen to mine. One…”

Cara breathes out, loud and exaggerated. He focuses on that, on the rushing-ocean sound of her breathing and tries to match it. The grey slowly fades from his vision as the ship comes back into focus. Din gathers the calm to him, pushes away the thoughts of his lost ship, of eyes on his with no visor between them. He will deal with these things later. Only one thing matters, the most important tenant of his creed: his clan, his family, his foundling.

_He means more to me than you will ever know._

Grogu.

His focus snaps back into place, razor sharp and deadly once more. Cara’s hand slides off his neck, and he straightens as she kneels in front of him. “Thanks.”

“No problem. We’ve all been there.”

Din makes himself meet her gaze, relieved to see not a shred of pity or worry there. She is coolly clinical and pragmatic as always, and besides, he supposes she’s right. “I guess we have.”

She smiles a little, picks the bacta wrap off the floor where Din had dropped it. “Nasty bruise you got there.”

He winces, lifting his arm to examine it. It seems even worse somehow now that his panic has subsided. “Blocked without my beskar.”

“That’ll do it. You sure it’s not broken?” He shakes his head. “You want some help, or you got it?”

Din feels a rush of affection for her, for the question under her question: _is it okay if I touch you?_ He nods, rests his elbow on his knee and holds his arm out to her. “I’d appreciate that. You’ll be able to get a tighter wrap than I will.”

Cara nods, eyebrows furrowed as she winds the wrap around his bruise. Din sighs in relief as the bacta begins to work at once, seeping into his arm. “Are you hurt anywhere?”

“Nah, I’m good. Everyone else is, too. We’re ready for this fight.” She pauses briefly, glancing up at him without the slightest flicker of doubt in her gaze. “We’ll get the kid back. He knows you’re coming for him.”

An old, familiar guilt rises up inside of him, climbs up his throat like bile as he watches Cara work. “I don’t know that he does,” he says finally.

She finishes sealing off the bandage, sitting back on the floor at his feet. “Why would you think that?”

It’s almost impossible to say the words, but he makes himself do it. He will not gloss over this part of their history; he will never, ever let himself forget it. “I gave him up. Before…all of this. He was just a job then, and I treated him as such. I handed him to the same people who have him now.”

Cara doesn’t look surprised. “I figured it was something like that,” she says. “But, hey. You _did_ go back for him, didn’t you? In the end.”

Din nods, though the guilt doesn’t abate. “I hope he doesn’t think…”

“He doesn’t,” says Cara firmly, reading his mind. “He knows you didn’t give him up this time. He knows you’re doing everything you can to get him back.”

“You sound so sure.”

“I am sure.” She smiles at him. “ _Anyone_ can see the way you look at him. He certainly hasn’t missed it.”

For a moment, Din can’t speak, just folds his hands together and hopes with everything in him that she’s right. Cara wraps a hand around his ankle and squeezes. Din closes his eyes, remembers Sorgan and paper lanterns, remembers one of the most intense sparring sessions of his life and pretending not to notice Cara’s tears as they laid spent on the grass after, his hand wrapped around the strong bones of her ankle.

Grounding her, as she is grounding him now.

“I can’t lose him,” he says.

“I know. You won’t. We’ll get him back, I swear.”

Din meets her gaze. “I _swear,_ ” she repeats, brown eyes bright and blazing, fingers tightening around his ankle. “On my life.”

He knows at once that she means it. There is no payment on the line this time, nothing at all binding her to him or Grogu, but he can see in her eyes what he knows is mirrored in his own behind his visor: Cara is in this until the end. She is ready to lay down her life for Grogu’s if that’s what it takes to bring him home.

Gratitude floods him, so intense that he almost chokes on it, gratitude that the galaxy put this warrior in his path, that she is beside him now, straight-backed and strong. He can think of no other he’d rather have at his back.

Din reaches out, wraps his bare left hand around her bicep, right over her dropper tattoo. “Cara,” he says, _“thank you.”_

She lifts her hand from his ankle to grip his arm in return, just above the bandage. “There is no thanks needed.”

He squeezes slightly before letting go, fingers brushing against hers as she drops her hand as well. Goosebumps raise on the back of his neck, his hand and arm tingling with the intensity of touching skin-to-skin. He thinks of Cara dragging him out of harm’s way, of her hands on his guns, of handing his beskar to her with hardly a second thought.

He thinks of how very soft and warm Grogu’s ears had felt between his fingers the last time he’d touched another being skin-to-skin, when he was trying to determine if the child had a fever. He thinks of clan.

Of family.

Cara stands. “You really should try to get some rest. “I’ll come get you an hour before we’re set to arrive.”

“Thank you,” he says again, grateful for the brief comfort of having a friend close, grateful also for her giving him his space.

Din lays down on the bench, knowing full well he won’t sleep but hoping to at least let his body rest. His can feel a dull throb in his ribs, his head, his collarbone, but he pushes them aside for now. They can all wait, and he doesn’t want to use up any more of the med kit than is necessary. With any luck, they’ll be in and out of that cruiser with no one noticing, but Din’s not optimistic. Odds are that they’re going to need the contents of this med kit.

Something presses uncomfortably against his hip, and Din pulls out the little gear shift lever ball. He rolls it between his fingers, letting the repetitive motion soothe his rising anxiety. The silence feels heavy and oppressive after Cara’s presence, and his thoughts wander back to what Grogu is doing now—if he’s alone, if he’s hurt—

Din clenches his fist around the ball and forces himself to breathe again. It won’t help his kid if he panics, if he allows himself to be anything other than sharp and focused and deadly—

 _His_ kid.

His.

_He means more to me than you will ever know._

The creeping panic clears again at once, leaving him feeling calm and clear at the center of the rising storm. That is _his kid_ on that imperial cruiser, his child in the hands of Moff Gideon. His sweet, inquisitive, funny foundling who had arrived so unexpectedly in his life and stolen his entire heart.

He will stop at nothing to get him back. He will kill every living thing aboard that cruiser if need be. He will give his very life.

He will take off his helmet a hundred times more if it will see Grogu back into his arms.

_By Creed, until it is of age or reunited with its own kind, you are as its father._

It is only now that he fully understands the depths of what that means to him.

Din holds the metal ball between his forefinger and thumb, lifts it high above his face until it catches the light like a miniature sun. “ _Ni kyr'tayl gai sa'ad,_ Grogu,” he whispers, and lowers the ball back down to his chest.

Until Grogu is home once more for him to whisper the words to, it will have to do.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Ni kyr'tayl gai sa'ad_ : I know your name as my child (thank you wookieepedia for my life)
> 
> -i neverrrrrr write fic before a season is over bc i like to have time to mull over my thoughts but i wrote and edited this in a 24-hour fever dream because i am emotionally COMPROMISED. i mean like. COME ON.  
> -title from "start a riot" by banners which is just space dad rescuing his space baby VIBES, GO LISTEN  
> -this is a companion piece of sorts to [paper lanterns](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27985773), but obv not necessary to read to get the full weight of this one


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